I stopped by to visit a coworker this afternoon, and she had her granddaughter’s Girl Scout cookie order form on her desk. I’m always game to support the Girl Scouts, so I signed up to buy a few boxes.
I was a Girl Scout for a couple years – 5th and 6th grade – and I had a great time. I wanted to join a year earlier, but there was no troop associated with my school that year. After 6th grade, my family moved and I never got going with it again, which I kind of regret.
I loved learning fun and interesting things. I never went to any of the long camps, but our troop went to a number of mini camps (just one or two nights long) and day camps. I remember one mini camp at a Girl Scout lodge in the mountains in the winter. It was a lot of fun to play in the deep snow. We also learned how to dip candles, and it’s possible that my current love of candles started there.
My favorite mini camp was one involving learning about different cultures. We went to Salt Lake (we were a troop from Provo) and visited a synagogue, a French restaurant, and a Swedish bakery. There may have been a couple other stops, but I don’t remember them. The French restaurant was a little too weird for my 11-year-old tastes (escargot is snails?!), but the synagogue fascinated me. Most of my memories of Girl Scouts are snippets, but I still remember almost all of our synagogue visit. It enthralled me.
I’ve always said that if I ever have kids, I want to get them involved in Girl Scouts early. It’s a great opportunity to learn about different things, and it’s a lot of fun to do it with all girls. If they have a bad troop leader, then we’ll search for another troop and if, as they grow older, they want to bail and do other things, that’s fine. But in early elementary school, I’m signing them up.
To my great surprise, this alarms some Mormons – more than I would have ever guessed. I never had any inkling that Girl Scouts were considered non-kosher for Mormondom until I was an adult. My first surprise came on my mission. My companion and I were discussing something that somehow led to the topic of Girl Scouts. I mentioned that I had been a Girl Scout and loved it and would sign up my daughters if I had any. The look of shock on her face quite confused me. Her statement that she wanted her daughters to be involved in Young Womens not Girl Scouts further confused me. First, I had elementary school age in mind; second, you can’t do both? Was she not involved in sports or band or dance or some other activity besides Young Womens?
My second surprise came at my first post-college job. I was working in Salt Lake, and in the small groups I worked with and hung out with, I was the only Mormon. This meant I occasionally cleared up misconceptions. One day the topic of Girl Scouts came up and a coworker said that she didn’t understand why Mormons couldn’t be Girl Scouts. I told her I had been a Girl Scout and almost everyone in my troop had been Mormon; thus, it was not true that Mormons couldn’t be Girl Scouts. She told me that a previous supervisor who was LDS had told her that. I shrugged and told her it must just have been his thing, that the Church was neither for or against Girl Scouts. I didn’t know of anything any leader of the Church had ever said in favor or not of the organization.
Since then I’ve just occasionally seen a comment here or there that lets me know those were not totally isolated incidents. I can understand why some may not be into the Girl Scout thing; I’ve heard the “horror stories†(as they are labeled) of liberal troop leaders passing on info to the girls that you would rather they not see at that age or you would rather teach yourself. For me, I’d switch troops if I objected to things going on in any troops my yet-to-be daughters were in. And I understand if parents simply have no interest; there are a plethora of activities to choose from and kids can’t do them all, even if some parents try. But the active hostility I see from quite a few members of the Church leaves me perplexed.